


i can’t go away with you with half a heart

by superoverdramatic



Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Band Fic, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Substance Abuse, still not over them, which means it’s au time babey, yh i think it’s pretty obvious i’m not a musician
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:14:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23941381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superoverdramatic/pseuds/superoverdramatic
Summary: He has never felt the burn of desire so immediately like this. He ignores the niggling voice in his head that says that this feels likemorethan just simple attraction, because that is ridiculous.In which Nadia is in a band and Guzmán is into her.
Relationships: Ander Muñoz/Omar Shana, Guzmán Nunier Osuna/Nadia Shana, Leopoldo "Polo" Benavent Villada/Valerio Montesinos Hendrich, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Samuel García Domínguez/Carla Rosón Caleruega
Comments: 14
Kudos: 122





	i can’t go away with you with half a heart

**Author's Note:**

> back on my bullshit yup yup  
> title from 'don't bother calling' by moses sumney, that's kind of the vibe i imagined for the band

**June 3**

**Madrid**

Guzmán can’t stop sneaking glances at Nadia.

Their friends are all spectacularly drunk, sharing shots and hugs and slurred congratulations, turned silly and affectionate by the liquor. But Nadia isn’t smiling.

She’s been quiet all night, hands wrapped around a glass of water that must be lukewarm by now, and Guzmán can’t help but eye her concernedly. Even her weak attempts at making conversation have died out, and she’s been silently staring down at the sticky tabletop for the past thirty minutes.

He is the only one that notices when she abruptly throws her chair back and stands, tracking her movements as she slips from the bar and the door swings shut behind her.

Guzmán takes a sip of his beer, and it tastes like the melancholy that sits bitter on his tongue. His heart is a drumbeat in his stomach and his skin crawls, itches with need.

_Once an addict, right?_

No one pays any attention when he gets to his feet and ducks out of the bar after her; Samuel is almost asleep against the grimy table, Ander is wrapped around Omar in the corner of the booth, and the rest of the gang are too buzzed to care what Guzmán is doing.

He finds her pressed up against the brick wall outside, illuminated under a streetlight on the corner, and she doesn’t make eye contact with him when he comes to a stop beside her. Her gaze stays low, fixed on her boots or the ground, somewhere that isn’t his face. His stomach does a painful flip.

“I guess congratulations are in order,” Guzmán finally says, scratchy and hoarse, breaking the long moment of silence between them. “A tour, that’s—”

He cuts himself off, not sure how to finish the sentence, and he could say the words stuck in the back of his throat, could be honest that he will miss her, but he doesn’t because he is a coward.

“Thanks,” Nadia finally whispers, her first words to him in weeks. He struggles to swallow around the painful lump in his throat. The cruel voice in his head sings _cowardcowardcoward_.

He can’t form the words that he wants to say to her, can’t step up and take charge of this, but he cannot make himself back away either.

He just—he can’t.

Guzmán can read in the tense lines of her body that she feels his eyes on her. His hand flexes at his side with how _badly_ he wants to wrap it around her wrist and pull her into him. But she is leaving, going on a six-city tour with the band, and he poisons everything that he touches.

Still, though. He could indulge himself this. Just once.

A silver Toyota pulls up.

“My Uber is here,” Nadia says, pushing off from the wall, and Guzmán can do nothing but watch her go, slipping through his fingers just like he knew she would.

**January 29**

**Six Months Ago**

Ander meets a guy, and he thinks that he could be _The One_. It’s how Guzmán finds himself accompanying his friend to watch the guy’s band perform, fifth-wheeling behind Carla and Polo. The venue is barely more than a tiny stage tucked into the back of a dive bar, and it’s packed and sweaty and disgusting. Ander owes him big time.

Guzmán is looking over the crowd, a head and shoulders above most people here, when someone steps onto the stage. From the sudden tightening of Ander’s grip on his shoulder, Guzmán can infer that this is the guy.

He’s followed out by three other people, two guys and a girl, who take their places at their respective instruments, and a hush falls over the room. Ander catches his boyfriend’s eye behind the keyboard and lifts his hand in a shy wave. Guzmán is about to rib him for it when a final person steps onto the stage and takes their place behind the microphone at the front.

He looks up and almost swallows his tongue.

She’s dressed appropriately for a place like this, torn jeans that sit loose about her waist, a cropped black t-shirt with the neck and arms cut off, and a dark scarf wrapped around her hair, curly flyaways escaping and framing her face.

But she glows under the spotlight. The slight upturn of her lips is confident and alluring and Guzmán wishes that he could pull her in and taste it. She introduces the band and her voice curves and dances over the syllables of their name, _É_ _lite_ , smooth and as entrancing as she is.

The song starts with nothing but her vocals, sultry and smoky, and the steady pulse of the drumbeat. It’s hypnotic.

Ander’s guy comes in on the keys, opening his mouth to join on vocals, and his gravelly rasp reverberates from the speakers and off the walls. The entire place thrums, the crowd undulates and breathes in sync with it.

By the time they hit the hook, the entire band is playing, something dark and swelling, and Guzmán hasn’t felt this way about music since before. His body tenses, ready as the music builds and climbs to its crescendo.

And then it all just stops.

The quiet is jarring, and it feels like Guzmán has been left to dangle off the edge of a precipice. The air is thick and catches in his throat. _It can’t end there._

And then her voice rings out, sweet and high on the final note, bringing with it sharp relief. Guzmán wonders if maybe she is a siren. There’s a moment of trembling silence before the crowd explodes.

**June 12**

**Madrid**

Élite have been on tour for barely more than a week when Guzmán gets a call from Ander at three in the morning. His friend has decided to tag along with the band and play groupie to Omar.

Guzmán is disoriented when he wakes. He feels around for his vibrating phone, not bothering to lift his face from where it’s plastered to his mattress, and answers the call blindly, grunting in lieu of a greeting.

“ _Guzm_ _á_ _n?_ ” Ander whispers, and he sounds genuinely panicked. Guzmán is suddenly much more awake.

“What happened?”

“Fuck,” Ander breathes, and Guzmán can imagine him raking a hand through his hair. “Fuck, Guzmán, it’s bad.”

“ _What?_ ” Guzmán presses, because his heart is starting to race, and he’s remembering a similar call from his parents two years ago.

Ander’s voice is grave when he recounts how Élite had been halfway through their first show of the tour when Samuel had taken a dive off the stage during one of the band’s more chaotic songs, the way he always does. Except that this time he landed wrong.

Ander sounds physically sick when he describes how the bones in Samuel’s wrist seemed to crumple like they were made of wet cardboard.

Guzmán is ashamed to say that he is relieved, not that Samuel is injured but that Ander is not, that he will not have to bury another person that he loves.

“Is he okay?” he asks, because that’s what you do when someone gets hurt.

“Yeah,” Ander says. Guzmán is confused why his friend called him like this is urgent news that he needs to know.

“They need someone to replace him though.”

_Okay?_

“I told them that you play.”

 _No._ “No.”

“Guzmán,” Ander starts to plead, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t do _that_ anymore, hasn’t even picked up his old acoustic in years. He feels anger burn a pit in his gut at the nerve of Ander to even ask this of him, just to help a group of fucking _strangers_.

“You know,” Guzmán starts, voice shaking with emotion, “why I stopped playing.”

“Just hear me out—”

Guzmán feels sick, breaths moving fast through him. “You can’t make me do this.”

“I’m not trying to _make you_. I’m _asking_ , Guzmán.”

He’s shaking, hands fisted in his sheets, and Guzmán wishes for the oblivion that comes from being high.

“I _know_ , okay? I know that I won’t ever get how you’re feeling. But, Guzmán, Marina wouldn’t want you to be like this, angry and mean and fucked up on cocaine all the time.”

Guzmán’s mouth drops open, because he didn’t know that Ander knew about the drugs. “Ander—”

“Don’t,” his friend cuts him off, and Guzmán hates the understanding in Ander’s voice, “you don’t need to explain.” There’s a beat of tense silence, and then, “I know nothing can compare to losing your sister, and I’m sorry. I’m _so fucking sorry_ she’s gone, but she wouldn’t want you to keep hurting yourself like this. You can’t keep punishing yourself by depriving yourself of things you love.”

_Shutupshutupshutup_

“You know her. She’d want you to seize this moment by the balls.”

Guzmán doesn’t realise he’s crying until Ander’s words surprise a laugh from him and he tastes the salt of tears on his bottom lip.

“Please, Guzmán.”

He’s at the airport within the hour, a hastily purchased ticket and messily packed duffel bag in one hand and his guitar case in the other. His flight to València takes off at five, and Ander is waiting for him in arrivals when the plane touches down. Guzmán doesn’t know whether he wants to hug or punch him more.

The band is staying in some shitty motel, and they’re all up when Guzmán and Ander arrive, piled into one room with similarly stressed expressions on their faces.

Samuel is sitting on one of the beds, casted arm in his lap, skin pale and eyes dilated. Nadia is cross-legged on the floor. Guzmán’s eyes go straight to her. Her hijab is only halfway on her head, one end thrown loosely over her shoulder. Her back is ramrod straight and she’s picking absentmindedly at her left thumbnail. She’s wearing his shirt.

Everyone seems to breathe a collective sigh of relief when he steps into the room. Rebeka mutters a low _thank fuck_ into the quiet.

“Can you do this?” Nadia asks without preamble, calm and flat from where she’s sitting. “Because if you can’t, you need to tell us now.”

The thing is, he isn’t sure. His insides are in knots, and he hasn’t played the guitar in two years and everything feels like turmoil and angst. But he takes a breath and says, “of course.”

**January 29**

**Six Months Ago**

The pianist’s name is Omar, and he appears a few minutes after the band’s set is done, sweat beading at his hairline and a flush to his cheeks. He taps Ander nervously on the shoulder, smiling small but genuine as he is introduced to them.

“How did you like the show?” he calls over the raucous crowd, and Carla and Polo compliment the set. Guzmán is quiet, scrutinising as he watches the body language between the newcomer and his friend.

“I can introduce you to the rest of the band,” Omar offers, and that is where Guzmán perks up. _The band_ includes the lead singer. He hides his reaction though, crossing his arms and scowling twice as fierce.

Ander digs his elbow _hard_ into Guzmán’s ribs as they navigate their way through the crowd behind Omar. “Stop being an asshole,” he says, barely audible over the din in the bar.

Guzmán shrugs, because he _is_ an asshole.

There’s a room off the back corridor, and Omar bangs on the closed door with both fists until it swings open. The rest of Élite are piled into the tiny space, singing and laughing and screaming.

Omar introduces the band first; Rebekah is the girl on drums, and for some reason she has lost her shirt, Samuel is the unremarkable kid on guitar, Valerio is the bassist and he’s got his legs in another girl’s lap, who he introduces as his sister, Lucrecia.

She shoves him off her, approaching with a spark of interest in her eyes, and the silver dress that she’s wearing sparkles under the harsh artificial light and drips from her hips. “Call me Lu,” she purrs, eyes fixed on Guzmán.

He isn’t looking at her though.

The singer is cross-legged on one of the cheap couches shoved against the wall, and she’s looking at Guzmán and his friends with mild curiosity. His ears feel hot under her gaze.

“And that’s Nadia, _my_ sister,” Omar is saying, and Guzmán rolls the name around in his head.

_Nadia._

His view of her is suddenly blocked by Samuel, eager as a puppy and just as annoying as he welcomes them. Guzmán doesn’t say anything when his eyes linger on Carla a little too long, but he notices.

“Did you enjoy the show?” Samuel asks, earnest, like he really cares about the answer.

 _Seriously, who is this kid?_ “Your picking was sloppy,” Guzmán says, because _asshole_ , remember? “And you hold the guitar like a subway pole.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

Samuel wilts and takes a step back, enthusiasm gone. Guzmán can almost sense as the entire band seems to turn on him immediately—Omar sends him a sharp look, his previous good nature gone, Rebeka looks murderous, and the only thing that seems to be holding her back from actually doing it is Valerio’s hand slung across her hips. He isn’t quite scowling at Guzmán, but he looks confused by the sudden hostility.

Over Samuel’s shoulder, Guzmán can see that Nadia is no longer smiling.

Even Ander is glaring daggers into the side of Guzmán’s face, and he knows that this is the moment when he should apologise.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he says instead, making sure to walk, not run, as he escapes the stifling tension. He can hear Ander start to apologise for him as the door swings shut.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Guzmán exhales when he’s alone, splashing water from the sink on his face and glaring at himself in the grimy mirror. He hadn’t meant to say that, wouldn’t have if not for the off-kilter feeling that came from Nadia’s mere proximity and has apparently turned him into a bumbling idiot.

Guzmán has never felt the burn of desire so immediately like this. He ignores the niggling voice in his head that says that this feels like _more_ than just simple attraction, because that is ridiculous.

So ridiculous, in fact, that when the door opens behind him and Lu slips into the bathroom, smirking wickedly, he lets her pull him by his collar into one of the stalls, lets her drag his hand under her dress and feel that there’s nothing under it.

This is familiar. This, he is good at.

**June 8**

**On the Road**

There are six days until the band’s next performance which means that there are six days for Guzmán to learn Élite’s entire set.

He ends up binge-watching all of their performances that he can find on YouTube, headphones on as he hums along in the backseat of the cheap makeshift tour bus. Samu’s version of sheet music is just messily scrawled chords on the back of any writable surface that he can find.

Guzmán still hasn’t found the courage to dig his guitar out of its case.

The band stays the night with one of Valerio’s old friends and his four roommates, leaving their equipment in the camper and squeezing into whatever space they can find. They are greasy-haired and too tired to do anything other than sleep—the girls share the couch and the boys make do on the floor.

Guzmán doesn’t go to bed with the rest of them though. He sneaks out of the front door while everyone else is out, climbs into the back of the van and _finally_ cracks open his case.

He strokes a trembling finger over the silky finish of the wood, almost reverent in his touch. He plucks a string, and the note is loud in the otherwise stillness of the street.

The last time he played, Marina was still alive. Guzmán bends at the waist and cries, and cries until there are no tears left in him.

And then, when he has stopped shaking, he picks it up.

He’s playing through his favourite song on the setlist, the one that is just Nadia’s airy vocals and the soft strumming of the guitar, when he hears quiet footsteps approach. He pauses.

Nadia rounds the open door of the van, sleep-rumpled with her arms crossed over an oversized t-shirt that he recognises as Rebeka’s, _HOODRAT STUFF WITH MY FRIENDS_ emblazoned across the front in faded black letters.

“It sounds good,” she says, eyes on her bare feet against the cold ground.

Guzmán can do nothing but nod his thanks. She traces a crack in the sidewalk with her big toe.

“Thank you,” she whispers, so quiet that Guzmán thinks she might not want him to hear, “for doing this. We all appreciate it.”

He doesn’t reply right away. Their history hangs heavy between them. “I didn’t do it for them, Nadia,” Guzmán says at last, just as soft, and her foot stills its movements.

**February 1**

**Five Months Ago**

Guzmán finds Nadia’s personal Instagram through the band’s account.

 **@shanaa_nadia** is private. Guzmán taps the ‘follow’ button before he has a chance to second guess himself.

He trawls through the band’s page, greedily devours every glimpse of her that he can find, the intensity of her eyes when she performs, her lazy smile in the backstage candids. He can barely breathe when he clicks on their Instagram story and he is met with her laugh, full and bright, as Valerio does a series of push-ups with Rebeka on his back.

He feels stupid, watching his phone and waiting to see if Nadia will respond to his request. It’s how he ends up at a club downtown, rolling on the molly that he took before he arrived, and he just wants to dance. The bass of whatever song is playing pulses through his body, and his heart beats in time.

Then there is someone there, hands on him, and when he opens his eyes it’s Lu, eyes glittering under the strobe lights. Guzmán wonders idly if this is fate, coincidence or just stalking.

He fucks her quick and filthy in the alley outside, buries his head in the crook of her neck and imagines the hair under his hands is shorter and curly, and the bare skin of the thighs around his hips is darker.

By the time he makes it home in the ungodly early hours of the morning, he is groggy as hell, his mouth tastes faintly of liquor and vomit and Nadia has still not accepted his request.

**June 14**

**Murcia**

Guzmán is hot under the lights of the stage and the penetrating stares of Élite’s fans who have absolutely no idea who he is. The weight of Samuel’s electric guitar feels unfamiliar and awkward in his hands. His palms sweat. He’s going to fuck this up.

Nadia steps up to the mic, introduces him, gives a shout out to Samuel who is sitting off to the side of the stage, and then she’s turning and nodding at the band to begin.

Omar comes in on keys first, and Guzmán is going to vomit, craves the soothing calm of a little blue pill. But he doesn’t do that anymore, hasn’t used since that night with Nadia when he ruined his chance at something with her because he’s a self-destructive fool.

He’s on the verge of panic, hands shaking around the neck of the guitar, when Nadia turns to him, offering a reassuring smile. It’s little more than a slight quirk of the corner of her lips, but suddenly Guzmán is breathing again, dragging air into his trembling lungs, and he can do this.

He will do this. For her.

**March 9**

**Four Months Ago**

The last thing Guzmán expects is to be invited to one of Élite’s afterparties after their disastrous first encounter. He was sure that it would also serve as their last.

“I swear, they told me to bring anyone I wanted,” Ander is saying. He’s been trying to convince Guzmán to come for five straight minutes now.

“I doubt they meant me,” Guzmán responds, as if he isn’t already thinking about how Nadia will be there, how all he has to do to see her again is get up and go.

“Can you stop being so _you_ and just come, please?”

Guzmán already knows that he will. He does lines off the counter in his bathroom and it’s all honey, it’s all good.

The party is exactly what he had been expecting, loud and dirty, and the smell of sweat, alcohol and debauchery is thick in the air.

He doesn’t expect to find Nadia as soon as he steps inside whoever’s house this is, but there she is, throwing a glance over her shoulder as she disappears up the stairs.

Guzmán idles a little, finds Ander and, weirdly enough, Carla, who isn’t there with Polo, but is instead sitting a little too close to Samuel than is probably necessary.

_Huh._

He can’t resist for long, though, and is halfway up the stairs mere minutes after he arrived. The first floor is crammed with bodies, and he has to force his way through them all, until he gets to the only closed door at the end of the hall.

Nadia is sitting cross-legged on the bed, and she looks up sharply as he steps into the room.

“Nadia, right?” he asks like he hasn’t been thinking about nothing but her for weeks.

She doesn’t relax even as she confirms that she recognises him. “Yeah, hi. Guzmán?”

He nods and closes the door behind him, taking a seat on the floor across the room from the bed and trying to look as unthreatening as possible.

“Are you okay?” he asks, because her eyes are bloodshot and she looks sad. She starts to nod, pauses, and considers him for a moment.

“I actually…I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I’m just having a rough day.”

“We can,” he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees now, “we can talk about it if you want?”

She looks down at the bed, breaking their eye-contact, and for a minute Guzmán is scared that he’s said the wrong thing, fucked it up like he always does.

“It’s the anniversary of my sister’s death tomorrow,” Nadia finally says, tracing her fingers along the edge of the mattress. “She overdosed. And I just—I didn’t even want to come tonight. All the drugs and stuff, it’s just not really me.”

Guzmán is suddenly nauseous. Nadia must take his silence the wrong way, because suddenly she’s laughing uncomfortably and starting to get to her feet. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know why I told you that, I shouldn’t have—”

“ _No_ ,” he says, urgently shaking his head, “no, I’m glad you told me.”

A long pause rolls as she squints at him, trying to gauge his sincerity.

“Tell me something about you,” Nadia eventually whispers over the faint thumping of the beat beneath their feet, and he wants to tell her everything.

So he does.

Guzmán took guitar lessons at school when he was eight, and he was good. Really good.

Polo and Ander, his closest friends since childhood, took lessons for a little while too because the three of them have always done everything together. They made a band, in the way that most little kids do, performing tuneless covers at family get togethers, until the other boys quit.

Guzmán got older and went to a good college and studied business, because when you have parents like his, the one thing you don’t do is go into the arts. Still, he played in his free time, strumming aimlessly at the strings in the quiet of his shitty dorm room when he could no longer take staring at the paper due for his next class.

And then his sister died. A drunk driver ran a red light and just like that, everything that she was ceased to exist.

Marina had always loved seeing him play, so he stopped. Marina always joked about his obsession with his hair, so he shaved it all off. Marina visited him frequently at college, so he dropped out.

Nadia looks at him with watery eyes, and Guzmán bites off the rest of his story before he overshares any more, before he goes into how he started using slow at first—a pill here, a line there, how pretty soon he was learning how to get high on other things, things that make colours brighter and music louder and sex better, things that help him forget about Marina and anything that isn’t whatever substance he’s managed to get his hands on.

“I’m so sorry, Guzmán,” Nadia whispers, and he believes her.

He is on his way home, walking to clear his head and sober up, when his phone pings in his pocket with a notification.

 **@shanaa_nadia** has accepted your follow request.

**June 17**

**Almería**

The days before their next performance are spent rehearsing to death, messing with arrangements and just generally tweaking things last-minute. Guzmán spends his fleeting moments of downtime scrolling idly through social media and pretending that he isn’t just using it to check up on Nadia.

She has 18.5k followers on Instagram. He wonders if she remembers that he is one of them.

It is still painfully awkward between the two of them, and it feels like the only way for him to see how she’s doing is to stalk her account. That’s where all the content of her lives, pictures of her and her brother and the rest of the band, candids that are just a little too personal for their official account.

Guzmán can’t help himself. He just wants to feel close to her.

He’s careful not to like any of her posts, though, for fear that she’ll block him and completely shut him out of her life. He doesn’t know how he would cope without this one last thread connecting her to him.

**April 22**

**Three Months Ago**

He sees Nadia more often than he doesn’t in the weeks that follow the party, running into her as if by fate at the bus stop and the supermarket, and even once at Ander’s flat, when his friend neglects to tell him that he has invited Omar and the rest of Élite over.

Guzmán apologises to Samuel, because even he can admit when he is wrong, and maybe his animus stemmed more from envy than anything else. Samu perks up and accepts almost immediately.

_Fucking hell, this guy._

Across the room, Nadia is smiling shyly at him, hair wrapped in a pretty blue scarf this time, and he can’t help his own giddy grin, like he’s stoned or punch-drunk or something. He tries to be nonchalant when he drops down beside her, greeting her calmly, but he has never been good at hiding his emotions, and by the time everyone is going home, he has her number and her permission to text her, and he doesn’t know what to do with this feeling in his chest.

The next morning, Guzmán is pacing the length of his apartment, gnawing on his thumbnail, because there’s _no way_ she actually meant for him to text her, right?

His phone pings in his hand and it’s Nadia, as if she can read his mind.

**Nadia Shanaa, 16:04 PM**

hi guzmán, are you free tomorrow?

He falls into a rhythm after that. He stays clean, he hangs out with the band and he sees Nadia. Actually he sees a lot of Nadia.

He takes her to The Prado. They hire a boat and go out on the Grand Pond at Retiro Park with all the tourists. A barista spills iced coffee on her and Guzmán whips the shirt off his back to offer her, snorting when she calls him an attention-whore; she still puts it on in the bathroom though. He resists the urge to kiss her on the sidewalk while they’re in line for tacos from a food truck.

More than that, they talk. She tells him about May and he tells her about Marina, and when the pain of their dead sisters is too much, they talk about lighter topics. He learns that her scarf is actually called a hijab, and they talk about religion for a little while. It’s nice.

He can’t stop himself from putting his hands on her, a press of his palm to the small of her back, a brush against her shoulder, the barest skimming of fingers against her hip. He’s a tactile kind of guy.

One day Guzmán looks at up at her and that voice in his head chants _mineminemine_ , and he has to lean heavily against the wall because his knees feel weak and he is in love with her.

That same night, he takes three oxys and fucks Lu.

**June 26**

**Málaga**

They use their day off to go to the beach. No rehearsing, no arguing over the setlist or stage blocking. They pack up the van and drive until they hit the sand. Rebeka takes off for the water, stripping and flinging her clothes behind her as she goes. The boys take off after her, yelling when they throw themselves into the water in their underwear, and then there is no one left between Guzmán and Nadia but Samuel and his cast.

There’s a tense, awkward, _horrible_ moment, and then Nadia mumbles something and walks off down the beach after the gang. Samuel looks between the two of them, head swivelling comically. Guzmán turns and walks away before he can comment.

He situates himself at one of the restaurants overlooking the beach, closing his eyes against the sun, and he’s still like that ten minutes later when Omar drops into the seat across from him.

“What’s going on with you and my sister?” he asks, cutting directly to the point.

Guzmán cracks an eye.

“Well?” Omar prompts when he doesn’t answer, but that’s just the thing.

He doesn’t know.

“What did Samuel tell you?”

Omar frowns. “Why would Samuel need to tell me anything?”

Guzmán sits forward and Omar raises an eyebrow in challenge. He already knew.

_He already knew._

“Did Nadia tell you?”

“She’s my sister, Guzmán, she didn’t have to.”

_Well shit._

Guzmán struggles for the right words, hand tightening against his thigh, cursing himself for being so obvious.

“She misses you,” Omar says before Guzmán can get his tongue working again.

He looks out at the beach. Nadia is sitting beside Samuel on the sand, knees bent up to her chest, and he can’t breathe with how much he wants her.

“I miss her too.”

“So do something about it. Tell her.”

“I can’t, Omar,” he says, and it sounds like an apology.

“Why?”

Guzmán could choose from any number of reasons, the fact that he’s newly sober and sometimes the desire to get high is still crushing, the fact that he fucked her friend even after he fell for her because he’s destructive and selfish and irresponsible, the fact that there’s a secret part of him that sometimes wishes that he were buried underground with his sister.

He bites his tongue.

Omar blinks at him, gaze steady and unnerving, and then shakes his head and sighs. “Whatever else you are, Guzmán, I know you aren’t a coward.”

And for the first time in a long time, that vicious voice in his head goes silent.

**May 7**

**One Month Ago**

Guzmán is drunk. Really drunk. Like _the months after Marina died_ drunk. He finds Lu in the crowd and pulls her away from whatever friends she is sitting with, hoisting her into his arms by her thighs, and he almost drops her a few times and knocks into a wall hard enough to bruise in his haste to get her onto a flat surface not covered in alcohol.

They end up in someone’s bed eventually, and he has barely managed to drag her skirt up her thighs when the door swings open.

“Oh, sorry,” a familiar voice says, and the bottom of Guzmán’s stomach suddenly gives out. He turns to look over his shoulder.

Nadia is looking between him and Lu, and the dawning realisation on her face has him up and off the bed.

“Sorry,” she says again, but this time it sounds different, “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

“Nadia, it isn’t—”

She doesn’t wait for him to finish though, turning back the way she came, and he is going after her without a second thought, heedless of the fact that he is shirtless.

He can’t hear anything but the blood rushing in his ears.

“Nadia _, wait_ ,” Guzmán says around a mouthful of nausea, catching up to her quickly and grabbing at her wrist.

She snatches away, but he can’t let her go like this. He reaches for her again, and for a moment, they are a tangle of limbs as he tries to hold onto her and she does her best to fight him off.

Nadia pushes hard against his chest, and he goes stumbling back into the wall. Her eyes drop to something on the floor at his feet. He follows the line of her sight.

There’s a single baggie of white powder lying on the stained carpet.

“Guzmán,” Nadia breathes, voice cracking as she looks back up at him, expression horrified. “Guzmán, what is that?”

He swears his heart stops beating. He feels sick and exposed.

“Guzmán, _what is that?_ ”

He can’t answer, can’t bring himself to look at her. They both already know.

This time when she turns to leave, he doesn’t make a move to stop her. He bends slowly to pick up the coke, shoving it back into his pocket. He doesn’t go back into the room where Lu still is, and he doesn’t go back to the party either.

He walks dizzily from the party, head pounding, and unsteadily waves down a cab, and when he gets home he drops the plastic baggie down the toilet and throws up after it.

The voice in his head chants his name over and over, _Guzm_ _á_ _nGuzm_ _á_ _nGuzm_ _á_ _nGuzm_ _á_ _n_ , and he thinks it sounds kind of like Marina.

**June 30**

**Ronda**

He finds her in the ladies’ bathroom, pacing in circles and humming through their opener. Nadia is wary as he steps inside, letting the door swing shut behind him.

Guzmán tries for a smile, lingering by the door with his hands tucked tight into his jacket pockets.

“Hey.”

 _Hey?_ He mentally kicks himself.

“What are you doing here?”

Guzmán swallows, pulls his hands free and runs one through his hair. “I thought we should talk.”

“ _Now?_ ”

He understands her disbelieving tone—they are due on stage any second, but this is something he has to do and he doesn’t know if he’ll be brave enough later. He is tired of running, tired of denying himself this one good thing, the first thing that he has truly _wanted_ in years.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because that seems like a good place to start. “For what happened. And for…” he trails off.

“For sleeping with Lu?” Nadia supplies. “Or the drugs?”

Guzmán drops his head. “Both. All of it.”

Nadia’s gaze burns a hole into the top of his scalp.

“I was…I’ve been fucked up for a long time, and I fuck up everything around me too.”

“That’s a cop-out,” Nadia says, unimpressed. “I _saw_ you, Guzmán. The real you, who’s funny and likes to take off his shirt and cares about people.”

He feels his insides _bleed_.

“So please don’t insult me by trying to write everything off as you just being fucked up.”

_She’s right._

“I stopped using,” he says, hoping that, at least, will make her happy.

Nadia nods, expression schooled into something inscrutable, and says, “I’m glad.”

Guzmán blows out a breath. Flexes his fingers at his sides. His heart is in his throat. “I realised that I’m in love with you, and I tried to deal with it in the worst way possible.”

 _Fuck._ For a second, he almost can’t believe he said it.

Nadia’s entire body stills.

She stares at him, parts her lips to speak, and then the stage manager is knocking on the door and their chance is gone.

**May 18**

**One Month Ago**

Guzmán doesn't go to any more of the band's performances. Ander invites him, has been inviting him to their shows for the past two weeks, but he can't. It feels like someone has taken a hammer to his temples. His chest feels worse.

"Did something happen?"

He doesn't answer, because _of course_ something happened. He messed everything up, destroyed his chance at something good.

Ander kicks gently at his ankle, and Guzmán peels open one eye to glare at him.

"Is this about Nadia?"

Even just the mention of her name hurts, like an open wound that refuses to heal. He loves her, and he misses her, and he's so _tired_ of forcing himself to stay away, but it feels like the only thing he can do to keep from breaking her. He won't ever be able to forget her look of utter betrayal. It only reinforces how _wrong_ he is for her.

"She hasn't been—"

"Ander," Guzmán finally forces out, voice cracking painfully, "please stop."

Ander regards him, and Guzmán isn't quite sure what does it, if it's his tousled hair or the dark circles under his eyes, or his sallow complexion, but Ander acquiesces, falling silent. The show is due to start soon, and Ander bids a quick goodbye with a supportive squeeze to Guzmán's shoulder.

The front door has barely closed behind him before the first heaving sobs escape Guzmán.

**July 5**

**Seville**

It’s difficult to describe how loud the crowd screams at their final show. It’s their biggest yet, in an actual sold out auditorium with a capacity of seven hundred.

The fans don’t calm even as they end their set, and they end up having to play two encores. Samuel comes out on stage at some point, and the room goes wild. Guzmán feels their energy like electricity under his skin. He’s going to miss this.

Guzmán is surprised to see Carla and Polo backstage with Lu. He hasn’t seen her since that disastrous party.

“You’re a dick,” Lu says when she sees him, and then yanks him in close by the neck of his shirt. “If you fuck with her, I’ll skin you alive.”

He deserves that. But he won’t.

Carla and Polo are much happier to see him, but the two of them are standing pretty far apart from each other. Guzmán notices later how Carla spends most of the night beside Samuel and Polo’s eyes track Valerio’s every more.

_Huh._

The drive back to the hotel is euphoric—Rebeka has control of the aux cord and refuses to blast anything other than manic-sounding J-Pop, butchering the words and flinging her arms in the front seat while Ander begs her to chill.

They all decide to hole up inside and get shitfaced drunk, because tradition is tradition and Valerio insists, roping in Guzmán and Ander to hunt down the nearest liquor store and clear the shelves.

An hour after they start drinking, Omar is lying face-down on the floor with Ander on top of him, and Samuel is downing shots while Rebeka loudly times him and Carla and Lu mutter quietly. Guzmán doesn't think he's seen Valerio or Polo in at least fifteen minutes.

And then there’s Nadia.

The only one of them who’s still coordinated, she’s produced a ballpoint pen from somewhere and is tracing lines between the freckles on Guzmán’s arm, soft and gentle as she makes constellations of them. Her energy since the show has been softer, more open, and Guzmán almost doesn’t want to allow himself to hope.

The song changes to something more boy-bandy, and Guzmán still has no idea what they’re saying, but he decides that he wants to dance.

He snags the pen from Nadia’s fingers, ignoring her indignant _hey!_ , and tugs her to her feet and into the middle of the room. He slides one hand around her waist and the other into hers, and they start to sway.

“You cannot slow dance to this song,” Nadia says, giggling, and it makes him grin too.

“You can if you try hard enough.”

She throws her head back to laugh, and then rests her cheek on his chest, listening to his heart beat. “Tell me again,” she whispers into the skin of his neck.

She doesn’t have to say anything else, because he _knows_. “I love you.”

He feels rather than sees her cheeks stretch into a happy smile as they move in a looping circle around the room, and she presses her lips to his jugular. “I love you too.”

“So you’re just gonna have sex right in front of us?” Ander muses from the floor, and Guzmán absently wonders what would make a good defence for murder.

The rest of the night passes in a blur of shots and music and Chinese takeout, and the crinkle at the corner of Nadia’s eyes when she smiles brightly at him, and the wet press of her when he grabs her face in both hands and works her mouth open with his tongue.

**August 13**

**Madrid**

The morning of Guzmán’s twenty-third birthday, he doesn’t quite wake up so much as slam into consciousness to the sound of Nadia screaming and a very active phone screen. The band’s group chat is going off.

**rebe, 10:29 AM**

GUYS GUYS GUYS OMFG ARE WE FAMOUS

**rebe, 10:29 AM**

_Picture message recieved_

It’s a weirdly tilted photo of her open laptop screen, blurry and difficult to read, but the headline and picture of the band’s final performance on tour is clear enough.

 **Today is All About** **É** **LITE; how this indie band is becoming the next big thing**

The entire conversation from there is an incoherent mess of capital letters, exclamation points and emojis.

He also has what looks like hundreds of Instagram notifications, and one from Nadia just a few hours ago.

 **@shanaa_nadia** tagged you in a photo

_he's so obsessed with me **@g.osunas** happy birthday_

It’s from the night before, at his pre-birthday party-party, courtesy of Valerio and the obscene amounts of alcohol he brought over.

Guzmán has his face pressed into Nadia’s cheek, half-kissing half-biting the swell of it, and she is laughing, wide and bright and beautiful.

Guzmán scrolls through the comments, laughing at all the fans freaking out and tagging their friends with fully capitalised _I KNEW IT_ ’s and keysmashes. His follower count has jumped by almost eight hundred people.

Nadia is out of the bed now, jumping on the mattress, and Guzmán can’t resist climbing to his feet after her and dragging her into a kiss, whispering _I love you_ ’s into her mouth, and she is warm and steady in his arms when he pulls the clothes from her, until she is nothing but smooth skin under his hands, and kisses down the line of her body.

And it’s all honey. It’s all good.

**Author's Note:**

> it's about the mutual pining


End file.
